TECHICAL PROBLEM
It may be desirable for reasons of study to investigate the performance of everything from component parts to co-ordinated systems for robot equipment and peripheral equipment. Institutions have been obliged to acquire various types and makes of robot equipment fitted with different component assemblies and operable with different softwares, and in so doing severely restricting their opportunities to demonstrate and appreciate the fundamental problems involved. The software was also connected directly to the physical embodiment, which meant that any changes made to it also involved changes to the basic program. Changes of this kind the in prior art are difficult to implement because they call for thorough knowledge of the structure of the system concerned, which in turn demands access to the manufacturer's design base.
Manufacturing industry robot equipment able to perform one type of function, but not another which is to be performed and incorporated into the production line is contained in the prior art. This often leads to the use of interacting items of different kinds of equipment of which are then called upon to utilize standard interfaces, in turn complicating the effective and optimal utiliztion of the equipment as a whole. The more complex integration of the robots means that one will be constrained by the interest shown by the manufacturer in expanding and adding to his software. The result will be a special model, expensive and constituting a source of error, since the level of testing applied to the standard range of products is not possible. It must be remembered in this respect that it is difficult from a purely general point of view to localize programming faults in a special model of the type referred to here by comparison withe the standard product.
It will be appreciated from the above that, from both the educational and the industrial standpoint there exists a singificant need for a computer-based system which will permit several functions of the same and/or different kinds to be performed.